As a web developer, the iPad kicks ass for getting work done.. actually *replacing* my laptop for many things: reviewing online (or offline) documentation, checking email, and oh.. testing my work via Safari Mobile. If your work IS the web, the iPad rocks. In a pinch, I could code on it using a bluetooth keyboard, but that's not really what it is best at obviously.
At the very least, it makes a hell of second or third monitor (and has a much better display than the standard 75DPI used on most desktop and laptop displays).
I do have some serious gripes, primarily that of depending on iTunes to sync everything (but I get around that well enough with an old Linksys NAS200 stuffed with 2Tb in drives, a TZO.COM dynamic dns account, and port forwarding on my home router).
I actually held off on an iPad until the Samsung Galaxy reviews came out... I only use Linux at home and work, and a droid for my phone... I -really- wanted my platform to be a droid. My last "Internet tablet" was a Nokia N800 running Maemo... a pity that Nokia smothered their tablet line and moved the OS goalposts so many times (even now, the n800 is impressive... but lacks newer software).
Maybe in a couple of hardware revisions, android tablets will get there. I'm sure of it. But right now Android is not designed for tablets, and people are trying to force it into that hardware...
Teachers as a demographic of college graduates represent the lower half of the GPA pool
You are either trolling here, or you grew up in some kind of rich bubble.
Would you care to at least cite some respected source for this insulting "fact"?
I think public school teachers are *saints* for doing what they do... all that college debt of a masters degree, simply to enter a career field whose starting pay is well under $ 30K? Then once they are working, they will too often discover they have to pay for classroom supplies out of their OWN pocket (and often it is because public-school bashers like yourself lobby to starve schools of funds). Are you serious?
I think everyone will agree there are bad teachers, and even bad schools. Superintendents are grossly overpaid politicians. You have the same problems in fire and police (but for some reason the libertarian crowd does not attack those public servants, yet anyways)
I live in New Hampshire, the so-called libertarian utopia. You can see the harmful effects of the state model of (under) funding schools, leaving poor towns to fund poor schools. It's not a secret that most of the state's biggest income earning "libertarians" were either educated in out of state public schools or had parents wealthy enough to foot the bill for their college. It's a trendy politic to be anti-civic.
>Of coarse I would prefer that USians start following the Chinese example, and value education / hard work,
Oh, the irony of your statement...
But I do agree with you that US conservatives admire China. Thanks to Republicans, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Communist Party of China working hand and hand.. it's only a matter of YEARS before US workers go on strike, l demanding the end of all holiday overtime, workman's compensation, anti-discrimination laws, and anti-child labor laws. Why? Because it will be the only way to compete.
And that's why conservatives do not want to tax imports from countries who execute democratic "activists". Conservatives know they do not have the votes to return to the 1860's, but they CAN slowly and silently fiscally weaken the US economy with underinvestment and unfair trade policies, until there's really no alternative for the American majority to accept as all the hard won gains collapsed.
Foxit reader, like any other piece of software, is bound to have errors. Use it because you like the interface, or use it because it's less likely to be exploited due to its relative unpopularity. Don't delude yourself into thinking it's completely secure.
That's the same fallacious argument that some OSX and Linux users make when saying that their operating systems are immune from viruses or worms.
OK, now you have made a strawman argument. You can make ANY false argument with "some" and "may", and you shift the burden of truth. Your argument is false.
UNIX design actually assumes that nearly -everything- is insecure, and so all possible vectors of attack will have some constraints to limit the damage. It is a proactive design to dictate that you will NOT get more permissions than needed, because there WILL be exploits. If you exploit the browser or PDF reader, that code still can not touch the OS. Now you would need BOTH an application exploit AND a kernel exploit executed in serial for the app to compromise the system.
This onion model of security was worked out DECADES ago on multi-user UNIX system, where you had serious work and pranksters all sharing the same hardware. By the time we got *BSD (OS X) and Linux... it was a model that engineers didn't need to think about much. (And it's not perfect, although AppArmor is a great step forward vs. permission bits). Except for a Windows PC at work, I have not needed to deal with a virus scanner in 15 years.
Windows just needs to be better than the last version. Security in Windows still is not proactive - each version responds to specific attacks maybe, but it still is not real security. Just plug in a USB cheap picture frame and watch it disable your anti-virus....
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that if you replaced all the Windows machines with Linux tomorrow by next week those users inboxes would be full of "free_porn_codec.sh" or "Happy_puppy_screensaver.sh" with instructions that they WOULD follow to run them.
This is FUD.
You either do not know (or understand) what the "onion/layered approach" is regarding security.
An onion model assumes that vulnerabilities WILL happen, and therefore permissions are restrictive by default. If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the OS fault.
Permissive systems assumes that no exploits will occur, or rather that all KNOWN exploits are now defended against (ok, job done, let's go home guys...). If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the USER'S fault.
Guess which model has stood the test of time?
I get really annoyed when mouse jockeys try to say that Linux would be just as insecure as Windows IF ONLY MORE PEOPLE WERE USING IT. Your argument is based either on ignorance of UNIX, security, or out of defensiveness for your livelihood: you do profit from people's misfortunes using Windows. It is not your fault they run Windows and you enable that to continue - they choose this. So you shouldn't feel any need to emotionally defend Windows with an attack on Unix.
PS - if you actually TRIED sending "Happy_puppy_screensaver.sh" to a newbie who runs Linux, it would fail for more reasons than you could ever know.
It would be impossible for the Linux user to run emailed scripts by clicking in the email. Even if you had the user save the file, it would still not run. Even if you talked the user through how to enable the file's execute bit via chmod +x, it STILL would NOT infect the OS with malware. If you talk the user into running "su" to gain root permissions, only then are we talking real damage. THAT is what an onion layer is like.
Here's another example: On UNIX, there is 1 permission to read a file, and a different permission to allow execution. These permissions go on users, files, directories, filesystems, and even partitions.
Windows thought it would be a great "convenience" to just assume if you have permission to read something, it must be OK to run it also...
The DOS/Windows way of "read permission + file extension == execute" was widely laughed at before Windows even existed. In fact when Microsoft wanted a secure GUI system, they actually did security the UNIX way (OS/2).
You can legally block signals on your own property, but you have to do it passively so as to not affect the property of others.
Courts have ruled against jamming. Fine.
But the wording of the court decisions and FCC regulations do not prohibit you from building structures which degrade or -passively- block cell signals. Thick walls containing lots of rebar will block signals, but are not always practical on a train car.:-)
There's nothing illegal about painting walls using paint with a high concentration of metallic particulates mixed into the paint. There was some company who has patented this idea, but you could mix paint containing a fair amount of copper dust, and that -will- cause reception problems inside the room.
There are automated cars - they're called trains. Unfortunately, they only get $1 in federal aid for every $300 in federal dollars spent on subsidizing highways. Rail would have a fighting chance if both subsidies were ended, and if both wars were paid for using a tax on oil (which, given the point of the wars, seems only fitting).
So, if you're being followed by a suspicious person, and you want to call for help, you're out of luck because some douchebag like LaHood decided that you're not capable of exercising your own judgement!
Or, if you crash your car, but not hard enough to disable the jammer, you're fucked because you can't call 911.
Why the FUCK is this guy getting paid by the taxpayers?
With all these tubes, it's pretty easy to find second sources of information. Next time, don't be so quick to put on your three pointed hat and grab yer musket. In half the time spent on your faux outrage and musket-waving, you could have just HOVERED over the story link and you'd see this comes from THE REGISTER which in turn is quoting some obscure news source. Maybe you did that, and that's why you are posting under your anonymous alter ego: Demonstrations of willful ignorance tend to to get played back when least convenient.
Now even though we know this story is a hoax, you still can go around saying otherwise... because it "MAY" be true because even an improbable future event cannot be disproved, riiight? You so clever.
Wow, you got +4 for not reading the article (or for deliberately trolling).... we could live without you coming here to trash the forum, you know.
You did do us a service however... by exposing cheating by MODERATORS (those who gave you "+1").
See - It takes 2 seconds to skim through this article and get to the diff, and see the bare "true;" instruction (which is being used as a no-op in this context). This benchmark change does not significantly alter the benchmark (it doesn't change what it measures) but it DOES change the code signature of the benchmark.
It is unreasonable to expect a browser to change score just because the benchmark code signature changes... this strongly suggests that the browser is "looking" for the benchmark. You wouldn't need to be a nerd to make the connection, because the article explains this in plain English.
So at the very least, you helped expose a few fake/dummy/abusive accounts which were set up for destructive moderation, or those who simply allocate mod points without reading the article (something moderators are required to do). I expect these accounts will be banned from future moderation.
Thank you for inadvertently helping improve Slashdot moderation.:-)
Technically speaking, you almost never grow apple from seeds found in an apple you eat. This is basically because the seeds DO NOT match the apple (and this is due to two things: the parent tree was likely spliced onto different rootstock, and because most apples are cross pollinated with crabtrees because they make great polinators for other apple trees... lousy eating is not relevent since the meat of the fruit matches the type of tree that hosted the fruit)
You actually get the same problems with tomatoes and peppers. Just try growing hot peppers and sweet peppers... they will cross pollinate and gene transfer unless you separate the plants by a mile or more (with lots of unrelated flowers in between to reduce the likelihood that the same bee visits both peppers).
The term "window" or "windows" is as generic as software "applications", or for non computer comparisons, "car" or "beer". You can call your products car or beer, but you can't CLAIM that as a trademark (especially if you were not the first to market).
Microsoft was denied the trademark for MANY years, but sadly government institutions like Patents and Trademark were handed over to lobbyists, and instead of being led by legal experts they were led by political appointees. (If you think I'm exaggerating, try to find any apointee in recent decades who was not a former "corporate IP lobbyist")
Here's a quick link to the 1993 episode of Microsoft's trademark decline. They failed many years before, and just kept re-filing knowing that the patent office would eventually change from it's policy of minimizing monopolies, to one that granted monopolies.
Unlike the previous president, Obama does not self-grant extra-Constitutional powers to the Executive branch. Bush (or Cheney, really) may have done MANY things "with a stroke of the pen" but Congress has the real power (when it wants to, anyways).
The fact is that many in Congress can not approach Gitmo rationally, because there's a large group of people who *believe* that closing Gitmo means "letting terrorists run through our towns and schools". You can't say you're not aware of the phenomenon. In America there are (unfortunately) WAY too many unemployed ex-middle class who are too sick of politics to watch the news. If someone they identifies with SAYS Obama is going to "release" the terrorists into our cities and towns, then it MUST be true.
Just like how it must be true that by ending pre-existing condition restrictions in healthcare, that Obama will be killing grandmas and retarded babies. Just like how it must be true that Cuba gave China permission to drill in both US and Cuban waters. Just like Obama spent more money in his first year than ALL the Bush years combined. And of course, just like how Obama's a radical Muslim (except when he is a radical Christian). Just like how Obama is "raising taxes" when he wants to end the tax break given when a company replaces US workers with outsourced labor. Just like how Obama has appointed "Russian dictators" and Czars to take over the government (and how he is the first president to ever do this).
The elite of the extreme right know they can take a small unwieldy fact and wrap it in 15 layers of lies, and the outrage is VERY effective at scaring Congress. That's why Gitmo is still open.
I'm not saying all right-wingers hate America (except the ones who want to blow up DC), but they hate Obama more than they love America and that's why why we are sinking. Through the lies they spread, they're even managing to get people on Medicaid disability to protest -against- healthcare reform.
>If someone's cheating at poker in your casino, you bar him from the casino. You don't go to his house and confiscate his cards.
You do in Soviet Russia, which is the natural conclusion of unlimited corporate power. Blizzard's -nothing- on the evil scale... Monsanto would warm Joseph Stalin's heart.
That would be like OnStar disabling your vehicle for going too high over the speed limit. They can do this if they choose. Seizing property is not the domain of corporations... that "right" belongs to the courts.
I totally support Blizzard banning cheaters from multi-player mode. But disabling the game entirely is draconian, and assuming someone rich enough (not us regular folks) sues them it will be shown to be illegal.
>Prison is supposed to be a loss of freedom, not a loss of basic human rights.
Prison is also supposed supposed to be about rehabilitation... although there's some 25% of Americans who don't believe prisoners should be rehabilitated (which translates into, "don't let them out...")
If you are an optimist, Microsoft's promise of "cross-browser compatibility" means:
We will properly support the standards - AND THIS TIME we REALLY mean it!!
If you are a pessimist (or I might add, a realist) then Microsoft will make this an OPTION - and non-default at that... and when you select it, you are warned about losing certain web features or compatibility (similar to how they warn you against saving Office files in any "open" file format).
"I am not a web developer, so I am a bit confused about why websites are unable to provide even a basic level of support for IE6 -- perhaps a simple page without any fancy effects that just gives people whatever information they were looking for. Is it really that necessary to use Javascript for everything?"
Good question, but it's not that simple.
See, CSS and Javascript were DESIGNED to "fail gracefully". You could put some useful style on say a list or a heading, then use CSS to format it. If the browser support was not there, you would see the base elements.
Now this failback would understandably be UGLY (your prettified CSS list menu would look like a 1994 bulleted list), but it would WORK.
If Microsoft chose not to support the CSS standards, they could have done so. It's optional.
The ONLY way Microsoft could ruin CSS and Javascript was by agreeing to go along with the standard, and then change all the meaning. It's like if you spoke a slightly different language than your neighbor, and every 3rd word you spoke had different meaning to your neighbor (as in, every 3rd word was a normal term to you, but an unexpectedly offensive curse word to them).
If a browser did not support said standards, we could have all designed for CSS and IE6 would get a vanilla plain text page.
Microsoft knew that novice web developers would code and test in the "popular" browser first, then test other browsers afterwards. If that was how you developed, you were an unwitting tool in Microsoft's effort to destroy the open web.
It worked, for a time.
Then web developers revolted, by figuring out how to document Microsoft bugs. In the end, we developed this pseudo-language that ran on top of CSS and Javascript, so we could "hide" markup and styles from either IE or from the standards browsers.
All this effort wasted uncountable hours of web developers.
Was this deliberate sabotage by Microsoft? Let's just say that in the US anti-trust trial against Microsoft, emails from Bill Gates were revealed. Bill's emails essentially stated he didn't want to see MS developers "wasting time fixing bugs in HTML that only affect competitive browsers". (Meaning, if your HTML/CSS generation in some desktop app generates horrible invalid code... DON'T fix it... just let the IE guys know so they can write undocumented code to show your page "properly").
Literally, there's a story here how grass-roots web developers fought back to save the "information highway" from being effectively privatized as one company's property.
This is why so many people HATE IE and IE6.. even if they're not the type of people who normally hate Microsoft.
Your analogy about newspagers is a fail - it is constructed wholly to support your argument, but it is ridiculous. If you would just READ the article you would know this was not a libel OR slander case.
SpamHaus does not CAUSE anything. Spamhaus is a fact-based list which publishes addresses which send Unsolicited Bulk Email. You can not escape or spin your way past this fact (what planet are you from, anyways, where you would even TRY?)
Next, SpamHaus has not control or access to my servers.
If you are looking for someone responsible, it is the sysadmins (like me) who chose to use Spamhaus and then chose a policy. Most admins could use SpamHaus as a "block list" or a "tag list", and then there are the bright bulbs like yourself that maybe use SpamHaus as a white-list.
It is the admin's call to set policy, and arguably it is my free speech right to choose whatever list I want.
If you still claim to not understand, you either are an old Luddite who uses an assistant to read through all your email, find the non-spam items (and print them for you).. or you are being *deliberately* obtuse..
So all you can CLAIM is that you yelled fore, but no one heard you... especially since you are on a golf course in Illinois and SpamHaus only plays on UK courses, it is reasonable to assume your voice did not travel to SpamHaus. Maybe it's possible they still heard you (I am not an expert on the subject, so I will defer to your expertise on matters of acoustics).
Hmm.... There is no record of e360 attempting to contact Spamhaus... so you did NOT YELL... correct? Ah, now the truth comes out...
Only a fool would ever have used Blars, even when it was "maintained". They blacklisted us and sure enough, we heard from a few fools complaining that our mailserver was at fault for not 'delivering" email to their servers (which used Blars).
They didn't learn.. years after ORDB went offline, the ORDB folks did a "blacklist the whole world" trick to get people to stop addressing their domain/network (since so many admins were "using" them without ever subscribing to the RBL alerts or checking their homepage for status..
The moral of the story is, only use blacklists you understand and even then you have to opt into their notification/alerts system. Bringing this back on-topic, I still don't see how e360 could sue ANYONE, but given the attempt they should have tried suing the networks that were CHOOSING to score or block their email based on the SpamHaus list...
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As a web developer, the iPad kicks ass for getting work done.. actually *replacing* my laptop for many things: reviewing online (or offline) documentation, checking email, and oh.. testing my work via Safari Mobile. If your work IS the web, the iPad rocks. In a pinch, I could code on it using a bluetooth keyboard, but that's not really what it is best at obviously.
At the very least, it makes a hell of second or third monitor (and has a much better display than the standard 75DPI used on most desktop and laptop displays).
I do have some serious gripes, primarily that of depending on iTunes to sync everything (but I get around that well enough with an old Linksys NAS200 stuffed with 2Tb in drives, a TZO.COM dynamic dns account, and port forwarding on my home router).
I actually held off on an iPad until the Samsung Galaxy reviews came out... I only use Linux at home and work, and a droid for my phone... I -really- wanted my platform to be a droid. My last "Internet tablet" was a Nokia N800 running Maemo... a pity that Nokia smothered their tablet line and moved the OS goalposts so many times (even now, the n800 is impressive... but lacks newer software).
Maybe in a couple of hardware revisions, android tablets will get there. I'm sure of it. But right now Android is not designed for tablets, and people are trying to force it into that hardware...
Teachers as a demographic of college graduates represent the lower half of the GPA pool
You are either trolling here, or you grew up in some kind of rich bubble.
Would you care to at least cite some respected source for this insulting "fact"?
I think public school teachers are *saints* for doing what they do... all that college debt of a masters degree, simply to enter a career field whose starting pay is well under $ 30K?
Then once they are working, they will too often discover they have to pay for classroom supplies out of their OWN pocket (and often it is because public-school bashers like yourself lobby to starve schools of funds).
Are you serious?
I think everyone will agree there are bad teachers, and even bad schools. Superintendents are grossly overpaid politicians. You have the same problems in fire and police (but for some reason the libertarian crowd does not attack those public servants, yet anyways)
I live in New Hampshire, the so-called libertarian utopia. You can see the harmful effects of the state model of (under) funding schools, leaving poor towns to fund poor schools. It's not a secret that most of the state's biggest income earning "libertarians" were either educated in out of state public schools or had parents wealthy enough to foot the bill for their college. It's a trendy politic to be anti-civic.
>Of coarse I would prefer that USians start following the Chinese example, and value education / hard work,
Oh, the irony of your statement...
But I do agree with you that US conservatives admire China. Thanks to Republicans, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Communist Party of China working hand and hand.. it's only a matter of YEARS before US workers go on strike, l demanding the end of all holiday overtime, workman's compensation, anti-discrimination laws, and anti-child labor laws. Why? Because it will be the only way to compete.
And that's why conservatives do not want to tax imports from countries who execute democratic "activists". Conservatives know they do not have the votes to return to the 1860's, but they CAN slowly and silently fiscally weaken the US economy with underinvestment and unfair trade policies, until there's really no alternative for the American majority to accept as all the hard won gains collapsed.
This can be found somewhere more mainstream.. no need to promote the Brietbart site:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/11/18/Man-rejects-fruit-jar-suit-settlement/UPI-38081290112519/
Damn, I forgot to close the quote tag just before my reply, starting with "OK,".
I was with you through this part:
Foxit reader, like any other piece of software, is bound to have errors. Use it because you like the interface, or use it because it's less likely to be exploited due to its relative unpopularity. Don't delude yourself into thinking it's completely secure.
That's the same fallacious argument that some OSX and Linux users make when saying that their operating systems are immune from viruses or worms.
OK, now you have made a strawman argument. You can make ANY false argument with "some" and "may", and you shift the burden of truth.
Your argument is false.
UNIX design actually assumes that nearly -everything- is insecure, and so all possible vectors of attack will have some constraints to limit the damage. It is a proactive design to dictate that you will NOT get more permissions than needed, because there WILL be exploits. If you exploit the browser or PDF reader, that code still can not touch the OS. Now you would need BOTH an application exploit AND a kernel exploit executed in serial for the app to compromise the system.
This onion model of security was worked out DECADES ago on multi-user UNIX system, where you had serious work and pranksters all sharing the same hardware. By the time we got *BSD (OS X) and Linux... it was a model that engineers didn't need to think about much. (And it's not perfect, although AppArmor is a great step forward vs. permission bits). Except for a Windows PC at work, I have not needed to deal with a virus scanner in 15 years.
Windows just needs to be better than the last version. Security in Windows still is not proactive - each version responds to specific attacks maybe, but it still is not real security. Just plug in a USB cheap picture frame and watch it disable your anti-virus....
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that if you replaced all the Windows machines with Linux tomorrow by next week those users inboxes would be full of "free_porn_codec.sh" or "Happy_puppy_screensaver.sh" with instructions that they WOULD follow to run them.
This is FUD.
You either do not know (or understand) what the "onion/layered approach" is regarding security.
An onion model assumes that vulnerabilities WILL happen, and therefore permissions are restrictive by default. If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the OS fault.
Permissive systems assumes that no exploits will occur, or rather that all KNOWN exploits are now defended against (ok, job done, let's go home guys...). If there is real world exploit on multiple levels, it is the USER'S fault.
Guess which model has stood the test of time?
I get really annoyed when mouse jockeys try to say that Linux would be just as insecure as Windows IF ONLY MORE PEOPLE WERE USING IT. Your argument is based either on ignorance of UNIX, security, or out of defensiveness for your livelihood: you do profit from people's misfortunes using Windows. It is not your fault they run Windows and you enable that to continue - they choose this. So you shouldn't feel any need to emotionally defend Windows with an attack on Unix.
PS - if you actually TRIED sending "Happy_puppy_screensaver.sh" to a newbie who runs Linux, it would fail for more reasons than you could ever know.
It would be impossible for the Linux user to run emailed scripts by clicking in the email. Even if you had the user save the file, it would still not run. Even if you talked the user through how to enable the file's execute bit via chmod +x, it STILL would NOT infect the OS with malware. If you talk the user into running "su" to gain root permissions, only then are we talking real damage. THAT is what an onion layer is like.
Here's another example:
On UNIX, there is 1 permission to read a file, and a different permission to allow execution. These permissions go on users, files, directories, filesystems, and even partitions.
Windows thought it would be a great "convenience" to just assume if you have permission to read something, it must be OK to run it also...
The DOS/Windows way of "read permission + file extension == execute" was widely laughed at before Windows even existed. In fact when Microsoft wanted a secure GUI system, they actually did security the UNIX way (OS/2).
You can legally block signals on your own property, but you have to do it passively so as to not affect the property of others.
Courts have ruled against jamming. Fine.
But the wording of the court decisions and FCC regulations do not prohibit you from building structures which degrade or -passively- block cell signals. :-)
Thick walls containing lots of rebar will block signals, but are not always practical on a train car.
There's nothing illegal about painting walls using paint with a high concentration of metallic particulates mixed into the paint. There was some company who has patented this idea, but you could mix paint containing a fair amount of copper dust, and that -will- cause reception problems inside the room.
There are automated cars - they're called trains. Unfortunately, they only get $1 in federal aid for every $300 in federal dollars spent on subsidizing highways. Rail would have a fighting chance if both subsidies were ended, and if both wars were paid for using a tax on oil (which, given the point of the wars, seems only fitting).
You do know the story comes to us via The Register, right? The US is not planning to disable car phones. You have been taken in by a hoax.
So, if you're being followed by a suspicious person, and you want to call for help, you're out of luck because some douchebag like LaHood decided that you're not capable of exercising your own judgement!
Or, if you crash your car, but not hard enough to disable the jammer, you're fucked because you can't call 911.
Why the FUCK is this guy getting paid by the taxpayers?
With all these tubes, it's pretty easy to find second sources of information. Next time, don't be so quick to put on your three pointed hat and grab yer musket. In half the time spent on your faux outrage and musket-waving, you could have just HOVERED over the story link and you'd see this comes from THE REGISTER which in turn is quoting some obscure news source. Maybe you did that, and that's why you are posting under your anonymous alter ego: Demonstrations of willful ignorance tend to to get played back when least convenient.
Now even though we know this story is a hoax, you still can go around saying otherwise... because it "MAY" be true because even an improbable future event cannot be disproved, riiight? You so clever.
No, none what-so-ever.
Welcome to your daily two minutes hate, Slashdot.
Wow, you got +4 for not reading the article (or for deliberately trolling).... we could live without you coming here to trash the forum, you know.
You did do us a service however... by exposing cheating by MODERATORS (those who gave you "+1").
See - It takes 2 seconds to skim through this article and get to the diff, and see the bare "true;" instruction (which is being used as a no-op in this context). This benchmark change does not significantly alter the benchmark (it doesn't change what it measures) but it DOES change the code signature of the benchmark.
It is unreasonable to expect a browser to change score just because the benchmark code signature changes... this strongly suggests that the browser is "looking" for the benchmark.
You wouldn't need to be a nerd to make the connection, because the article explains this in plain English.
So at the very least, you helped expose a few fake/dummy/abusive accounts which were set up for destructive moderation, or those who simply allocate mod points without reading the article (something moderators are required to do). I expect these accounts will be banned from future moderation.
Thank you for inadvertently helping improve Slashdot moderation. :-)
Technically speaking, you almost never grow apple from seeds found in an apple you eat. This is basically because the seeds DO NOT match the apple (and this is due to two things: the parent tree was likely spliced onto different rootstock, and because most apples are cross pollinated with crabtrees because they make great polinators for other apple trees... lousy eating is not relevent since the meat of the fruit matches the type of tree that hosted the fruit)
You actually get the same problems with tomatoes and peppers. Just try growing hot peppers and sweet peppers... they will cross pollinate and gene transfer unless you separate the plants by a mile or more (with lots of unrelated flowers in between to reduce the likelihood that the same bee visits both peppers).
The term "window" or "windows" is as generic as software "applications", or for non computer comparisons, "car" or "beer". You can call your products car or beer, but you can't CLAIM that as a trademark (especially if you were not the first to market).
Microsoft was denied the trademark for MANY years, but sadly government institutions like Patents and Trademark were handed over to lobbyists, and instead of being led by legal experts they were led by political appointees. (If you think I'm exaggerating, try to find any apointee in recent decades who was not a former "corporate IP lobbyist")
Here's a quick link to the 1993 episode of Microsoft's trademark decline. They failed many years before, and just kept re-filing knowing that the patent office would eventually change from it's policy of minimizing monopolies, to one that granted monopolies.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/25/business/microsoft-trademark-setback.html
Unlike the previous president, Obama does not self-grant extra-Constitutional powers to the Executive branch. Bush (or Cheney, really) may have done MANY things "with a stroke of the pen" but Congress has the real power (when it wants to, anyways).
The fact is that many in Congress can not approach Gitmo rationally, because there's a large group of people who *believe* that closing Gitmo means "letting terrorists run through our towns and schools". You can't say you're not aware of the phenomenon. In America there are (unfortunately) WAY too many unemployed ex-middle class who are too sick of politics to watch the news. If someone they identifies with SAYS Obama is going to "release" the terrorists into our cities and towns, then it MUST be true.
Just like how it must be true that by ending pre-existing condition restrictions in healthcare, that Obama will be killing grandmas and retarded babies. Just like how it must be true that Cuba gave China permission to drill in both US and Cuban waters. Just like Obama spent more money in his first year than ALL the Bush years combined. And of course, just like how Obama's a radical Muslim (except when he is a radical Christian). Just like how Obama is "raising taxes" when he wants to end the tax break given when a company replaces US workers with outsourced labor. Just like how Obama has appointed "Russian dictators" and Czars to take over the government (and how he is the first president to ever do this).
The elite of the extreme right know they can take a small unwieldy fact and wrap it in 15 layers of lies, and the outrage is VERY effective at scaring Congress. That's why Gitmo is still open.
I'm not saying all right-wingers hate America (except the ones who want to blow up DC), but they hate Obama more than they love America and that's why why we are sinking. Through the lies they spread, they're even managing to get people on Medicaid disability to protest -against- healthcare reform.
>>Nah, we should level an American city that isn't being useful anymore.
>Washington DC?
Leveling DC is just one of the shared goals between Islamic terrorists and the radical Teabaggers.
>If someone's cheating at poker in your casino, you bar him from the casino. You don't go to his house and confiscate his cards.
You do in Soviet Russia, which is the natural conclusion of unlimited corporate power. Blizzard's -nothing- on the evil scale... Monsanto would warm Joseph Stalin's heart.
That would be like OnStar disabling your vehicle for going too high over the speed limit. They can do this if they choose. Seizing property is not the domain of corporations... that "right" belongs to the courts.
I totally support Blizzard banning cheaters from multi-player mode. But disabling the game entirely is draconian, and assuming someone rich enough (not us regular folks) sues them it will be shown to be illegal.
>Prison is supposed to be a loss of freedom, not a loss of basic human rights.
Prison is also supposed supposed to be about rehabilitation... although there's some 25% of Americans who don't believe prisoners should be rehabilitated (which translates into, "don't let them out...")
It's a balancing act. if a company REALLY listened to their customers, they would get sued by their shareholders instead. Yes, this does happen...
If you are an optimist, Microsoft's promise of "cross-browser compatibility" means:
We will properly support the standards - AND THIS TIME we REALLY mean it!!
If you are a pessimist (or I might add, a realist) then Microsoft will make this an OPTION - and non-default at that... and when you select it, you are warned about losing certain web features or compatibility (similar to how they warn you against saving Office files in any "open" file format).
"I am not a web developer, so I am a bit confused about why websites are unable to provide even a basic level of support for IE6 -- perhaps a simple page without any fancy effects that just gives people whatever information they were looking for. Is it really that necessary to use Javascript for everything?"
Good question, but it's not that simple.
See, CSS and Javascript were DESIGNED to "fail gracefully". You could put some useful style on say a list or a heading, then use CSS to format it. If the browser support was not there, you would see the base elements.
Now this failback would understandably be UGLY (your prettified CSS list menu would look like a 1994 bulleted list), but it would WORK.
If Microsoft chose not to support the CSS standards, they could have done so. It's optional.
The ONLY way Microsoft could ruin CSS and Javascript was by agreeing to go along with the standard, and then change all the meaning. It's like if you spoke a slightly different language than your neighbor, and every 3rd word you spoke had different meaning to your neighbor (as in, every 3rd word was a normal term to you, but an unexpectedly offensive curse word to them).
If a browser did not support said standards, we could have all designed for CSS and IE6 would get a vanilla plain text page.
Microsoft knew that novice web developers would code and test in the "popular" browser first, then test other browsers afterwards. If that was how you developed, you were an unwitting tool in Microsoft's effort to destroy the open web.
It worked, for a time.
Then web developers revolted, by figuring out how to document Microsoft bugs. In the end, we developed this pseudo-language that ran on top of CSS and Javascript, so we could "hide" markup and styles from either IE or from the standards browsers.
All this effort wasted uncountable hours of web developers.
Was this deliberate sabotage by Microsoft? Let's just say that in the US anti-trust trial against Microsoft, emails from Bill Gates were revealed. Bill's emails essentially stated he didn't want to see MS developers "wasting time fixing bugs in HTML that only affect competitive browsers". (Meaning, if your HTML/CSS generation in some desktop app generates horrible invalid code... DON'T fix it... just let the IE guys know so they can write undocumented code to show your page "properly").
Literally, there's a story here how grass-roots web developers fought back to save the "information highway" from being effectively privatized as one company's property.
This is why so many people HATE IE and IE6.. even if they're not the type of people who normally hate Microsoft.
Your analogy about newspagers is a fail - it is constructed wholly to support your argument, but it is ridiculous. If you would just READ the article you would know this was not a libel OR slander case.
SpamHaus does not CAUSE anything. Spamhaus is a fact-based list which publishes addresses which send Unsolicited Bulk Email. You can not escape or spin your way past this fact (what planet are you from, anyways, where you would even TRY?)
Next, SpamHaus has not control or access to my servers.
If you are looking for someone responsible, it is the sysadmins (like me) who chose to use Spamhaus and then chose a policy. Most admins could use SpamHaus as a "block list" or a "tag list", and then there are the bright bulbs like yourself that maybe use SpamHaus as a white-list.
It is the admin's call to set policy, and arguably it is my free speech right to choose whatever list I want.
If you still claim to not understand, you either are an old Luddite who uses an assistant to read through all your email, find the non-spam items (and print them for you).. or you are being *deliberately* obtuse..
OK.
SpamHaus is on a golf course...
You yell "FORE!".
So all you can CLAIM is that you yelled fore, but no one heard you... especially since you are on a golf course in Illinois and SpamHaus only plays on UK courses, it is reasonable to assume your voice did not travel to SpamHaus. Maybe it's possible they still heard you (I am not an expert on the subject, so I will defer to your expertise on matters of acoustics).
Hmm.... There is no record of e360 attempting to contact Spamhaus... so you did NOT YELL... correct?
Ah, now the truth comes out...
Poorly constructed analogies fail.
Only a fool would ever have used Blars, even when it was "maintained". They blacklisted us and sure enough, we heard from a few fools complaining that our mailserver was at fault for not 'delivering" email to their servers (which used Blars).
They didn't learn.. years after ORDB went offline, the ORDB folks did a "blacklist the whole world" trick to get people to stop addressing their domain/network (since so many admins were "using" them without ever subscribing to the RBL alerts or checking their homepage for status..
The moral of the story is, only use blacklists you understand and even then you have to opt into their notification/alerts system. Bringing this back on-topic, I still don't see how e360 could sue ANYONE, but given the attempt they should have tried suing the networks that were CHOOSING to score or block their email based on the SpamHaus list...